Cooking for friends

I haven't cooked a Sunday lunch for a while and my culinary heart is definitely stuck in the early nineties. I have very little truck with foams, smears or god help us, liquid nitrogen. 

'Cooking for friends' is a book published by Raymond Blanc in 1991. I bought it from the man himself on my first visit to Le Manor aux Quat Saison and for a long while found the recipes impossibly scary. Nearly a quarter of a century later I see them for the good honest French tucker they actually are and so when it came to menu planning two out of my three recipes are from this book.

The starter in the picture is 'Terrine de Lentils et caille' (that's lentils with quail wrapped in savoy cabbage, set in a meat jelly) which to my amazement didn't collapse as soon as I tried to click it.

My main was a lobster bisque (my recipe) with baked seafood and french bread.  Dessert, a cherry clafoutis care of Raymondo again.

Paul, Anne, Isobel and Tony liked it and I felt it was worth the three days or so to put together (the lobster stock had been saved in the freezer since Christmas).

I should make these lunches a habit again.